Unarmed people encourage this sort of lawless behavior and senseless tragedy. If we required everyone to be armed all the time, the murder rate would quickly drop to zero. Obviously three months is too young, but surely by first grade, in addition to learning to read, our children should be learning to shoot, and along with their backpacks filled with books they should be carrying a gun for protection. Another word for unarmed people is "targets". Don't be a target. Don't let your loved ones be targets. Arm your toddler today.

required colonists to be armed. Granted, we live in very different times. But at one time it was considered civic duty to be armed and prepared to defend oneself and property, as well as neighbors and community properties.

Excerpts from this pdf: Colonial Firearm Regulation

Now, as for "laws restricting possession of firearms by blacks and Indians", lets just say that 250 years on we like to think we are better informed. Personally I am not so sure, but collectively we like to make believe that we are a more "enlightened" society.



Notable non-mention of women and semi-automatic handguns with 30 round magazines. Also, I love the spelling conventions in the language of the day.

Less sarcastically, where do we as a society step up and care for and protect each other? From trying to cheer up someone who seems to be having a bad day, or intervening in someones life who appears to be in emotion turmoil, or pulling someone out from in front of a subway train, or arming ones self to be prepared to defend body and property - what is appropriate? Legally - all of the preceding are appropriate in context.

Clearly there are moral, ethical and legal questions. My view - is that we must find our own answers to the moral and ethical pieces. The legal issues, our body of laws, while derived from our collective selves as a system of government, provide the only real guidance outside of moral and ethical guidelines. And there are so many gaps, so many grey areas and interpretive loopholes, such a dearth of accessibility in the law, that ultimately we end up making day to day and minute to minute decisions based on our own moral and ethical experiences.

Good god - I have to get going to work......

We are not in the midst of a centuries long invasion/migration and genocide against the local population, that mission has been accomplished, so the reason why white non-catholic males were required to be armed has vanished.

Instead we are in the midst of a self induced tsunami of gun violence, the solution to which is now "more guns everywhere".

You should look more closely at the perpetrators of violence and propose plans on how to stop them.

That's the only reason you can put forth for owning weapons?

Your imagination fails you.

It always comes from gun control advocates as a sarcastic straw man argument.

If I thought that carrying one would make me safer, I would.

Violent crime is a reality, and old people are frequently targeted by thugs.

You just don't like them.

Only the anti-gun zealots say shit like this.

Marissa Alexander's case was radically diferent. Warning shots are usually wrong. It is meant to warn the criminal but the bullet goes to whom it may concern. That is reckless endangerment, in this case of anybody on the other side of the ceiling, upstairs if there is anybody there. A gun is not supposted to be drawn or fired except in "the gravest extreme". By firing a warning shot you are demonstrating that you are not yet in the gravest extreme as you have time to evaluate if the warning shot does what you intend it to, then if not to shoot for real. She should have shot him instead if she was in that level of danger. But since self-defense is an affirmative defense (That means that you have to prove self-defense after you admit to shooting.) you have to be ready to prove it.

SYG had nothing to do with it. SYG comes into play only AFTER you have proven self-defense and it absolves you from the duty to retreat, nothing more. It isn't a "get out of jail free" card as many attempt to paint it.

have been a far superior outcome. But I think you raise an interesting point about how the narrative around so many incidents is shaped and directed by outside agendas and prejudices: Ms. Perkins' murder has become a gun-narrative, largely to the exclusion of Ms. Perkins herself. Is that right or fair? Perhaps a domestic violence narrative, or mental health, or even a sports narrative, would be more appropriate.

But I think you're correct that if she had survived and Mr. Belcher died the discussion would be very different - it probably wouldn't be a gun talk at all. And your guess about how the Faux/Rush world would spin it is a pretty good one; I'm surprised we haven't heard some echo of that even now...

Because of guns, either way Perkins the victim would be blamed: either for failing to defend herself or if she did, for destroying Belcher's livelihood, or leaving her child without a father. I think the conservatives calling for Bob Costas' head KNOW that they would have bashed Perkins if she stood her ground. Because of the prejudices, Perkins would be remembered more for killing a football player than defending herself/child. Because her child's father and pro athlete was the target, not some robber or mugger, people would react differently to her self defense.

would be. Sadly, we can only speculate how people in the pundit world and blogosphere would react if the outcome had been different.

I do think that a lot of the reaction to Costas (and Whitlock) was rather knee-jerky: neither the quote nor the column really called for gun control or more gun regulation, and in fact was not all that different from what gun owners themselves say. I.e., guns aren't toys, they shouldn't be the immediate go-to for conflict resolution, responsible and safe ownership is a must, etc.

I really don't think Ms. Perkins' murder should have spun into a major gun-rights/control issue at all - it's a symptom of narrative-framing and a polarized discourse that that happened to the extent it did...

People like Rush and his clones would have a field day feeding meat to the racists and misogynists.

She might well have been portrayed as a psycho by the media but she would not be six feet under. Surviving and being alive does have certain advantages.

If she stood her ground during the fight and caused the death or incapacitation of Belcher, her reputation as someone who destroyed a promising career would give her trouble getting a job...essentially a scarlet letter on her forehead.

It would be another documented DGU, which would trump racial considerations. Remember that both SAF and NRA supported McDonald, who is black.